Renewal or something
I started this year with a word. Renewal.
I am not normally one to choose a word, or make resolutions, or create goals.
But 2020… 2020 back then on January 1st was a whole new world for me. The first year of the rest of my life…really honestly that cliche is how I felt.
I was coming out of another round of stress induced depression and was 100% sure I was starting my new life, the one I had moved back to England for.
I am not someone who likes to stand still, who likes the in-between and the growing times; the bits of life that feel like preparation or like you are waiting for something. I have been, for as long as I remember, a ‘what next’ person. Onto the next thing before the thing ‘now’ has had a chance to begin.
2020 in all its mess and glory and pure disaster has literally forced me (and the billions around the planet, obviously) to stop. Physically stop.
Nothing about this is news to anyone, because this world in 2020 has felt like someone flipped the perfectly set table over and interrupted every plan and idea that this dinner would be the best yet.
Renewal: “having been resumed, re-established, or revived.''
This word, that I stuck to my kitchen wall, aiming to remind myself I was allowed the time to re-establish who the **** I am or something; has actually become more of an echo of the world around me.
The women that wrote that word down in January thought that by December 2020 she would have worked it all out, figured out the next 5 years plan, established herself in her new city, shaken off the mess that the past years had felt like and become a revived new person.
In one way it didn’t happen. I lived back with my parents for 4 months, just me and them. I lost my job, spent months writing applications, questioning if anything would be ‘normal’ again, found a new job and got stuck in.
But in one way it did happen. I don’t have a 5 year plan - not that I have ever been good at that - but I have landed in a job where I know I can learn more about what I want to learn about. I haven’t shaken off the mess of what actually I have discovered is about a decade of stuff, but I have discovered how much that mess has taught me, shaped me, allowed me to become stronger in my convictions. I have not become a revived new person - I am ending this year only a tiny bit less tired than I started, but I have become a more formed person, one who wears her scars and disappointments and achievements in acceptance knowing that each moment got me to where I am but they don’t define me.
I look at this year and see deeper friendships with people who’ve known me for just over a year (thank the Lord for bubbles!), renewed friendships with people who’ve known me for 12, a higher respect and understanding of my parents and my siblings. I still hate the in-between, the preparation stage, the feeling that I want to move onto the next thing. The disappointment in another year being single, the desire to find a house to make my own home and that I wasn’t able to loose all the weight I wanted; the disappointment that my job is one step on a ladder I wish I was at the top of.
But I have also noticed that I am settling more into the idea that life isn’t a sprint, and if I am honest I am not sure if it is even a marathon - not that I have ever run one, but I can imagine you are focused more on putting one foot in front of another than taking in the world around you - I have come to the conclusion today that maybe it is a long walk. Like the ones I love to go on, high in the hills, through wild flowers and horses, taking in the horizon views, and tiny picture perfect villages; taking each step and moving forward but taking in the beauty around me at the same time.
As I end this year, and I look back, I see how God has held each moment. I don’t pretend to have all the answers or the reasoning behind why the suffering that happening this year has happened, it is not something I think I will ever fully understand. But I do know that in this year the only things that have stayed constant it that I have this unshakable idea that God is good and that God is love. Even one the worst days, even in the darkest moments, He seemed to be there.
I think this world Renewal might follow me around for a bit longer, I’m not sure I am done with it. With the idea that I can become re-established and revived. Maybe, as much as I dislike things taking time, 2020 was just the start.
This poem inspired me to write this all out on a blank webpage:
They are fools, you know-
those ones who think you can never change
those ones who think you can never grow
for as long as you live
you will have today to prove them wrong.
ATTICUS
R/
